GoodNews,Issue #38
Hi Folks,
It’s been a while since I’ve sent you anything.
Many of us are of us are still cheering the huge victories in the U.S. November 4th state elections - in New Jersey, Virginia and other states, for governors as well as state supreme courts. And many of us are thrilled that a practicing progressive, pacifist Muslim, who supports a Palestinian state and dares to call out Israel’s current right wing leader and the U.S. for government for supporting his genocide in Gaza, an avowed and proud Democratic Socialist has become Mayor of New York City (in spite of the millions of dollars poured into his opponent’s campaign and the refusal of key Democrat leadership to endorse him). Mamdani’s intelligence and grasp of the issues, combined with his ability to reach out and address the day-to-day issues of ordinary struggling citizens and not talk party line was amazing. And, thanks to the 100,000 mostly young volunteers who went door-to-door campaigning for Mamdani and his plans for NY City was not only refreshing but daring.
Some of you who read my Newsletters will be disagreeing with me and some, like most of my family, are still hard core Trump devotees for whom the word “socialism” strikes terror in their/your heart.
I hope that we are can at least agree that it’s important - and a civic duty - to take voting seriously and be willing to engage in really difficult discussions - e.g. abortion, immigrants, and religion, academic freedom, etc. I just watched a 2006 film called Bobby, about the day Robert Kennedy was assassinated, having just given a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel. This movie focused on the many ordinary people who were working at the hotel that day. What I really appreciated in that movie was seeing a lot of footage of Kennedy and hearing him speak at length during the latter part of the film. Words from his campaign and that he spoke after it was clear he’d won the Democratic Primary for President. That was 1968. I haven’t heard his voice in so many years. And it brought back so many memories. Everything Bobby said applies today in America. I stopped voting for 4 years after his assassination, which followed MLK’s assassination - out of rage, despair and hopelessness. That was indulgent of me. As was stopping communicating with my sister and daughter, for a time, out of anger at their political and social views. Regarding elections, this year I’m taking much more seriously the roles of States Attorneys General and state Supreme Courts.
In this issue of my newsletter, I’m highlighting a number of accomplishments that I feel are Good News, from around the world and across the U.S.A., which I glean from various sources, hoping to inspire you and remind all of us that we must stay vigilant and active in pursuing democratic principles, social justice, equity, clean air, water and food… and world peace.
Suzanne
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The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 was awarded to Maria Corina Machado, the pro-democracy Venezuelan opposition leader and activist, for her courageous work! I’d say that’s very good news.
This, from THE PROGRESS NETWORK online newsletter, “What Could Go Right?”
November 6 edition [you might want to subscribe to them, for free, @ TheProgressNetwork.org]
While New Zealand considered, but then dropped the idea, the tiny nation of Maldives became the first in the world to institute a tobacco ban for anyone for any person born after January 1, 2007. The ban prevents them from buying, smoking or selling tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and vaping products. It exempts native people who use tobacco in sacred ceremony. Of course, passing laws doesn’t mean people follow them. But it’s one step toward keeping cynical tobacco companies from getting the world’s youth addicted.
Other good news they reported in this issue:
31 U.S. States have enacted laws to require drug companies to lower Rx prices by the end of 2025. Medicare negotiated lower prices for 15 prescription drugs, to go into effect 2027.
This includes a 71% drop in the prices of 3 major drugs used for obesity and Type 2 diabetes, which currently cost consumers around $1,000 a month! Other drugs on the list are ones for asthma, leukemia and breast cancer.
36 States now limit or ban cell phones in schools (through high school)
Between 2000 and 2023 there was a 41% decline in global maternal mortality
90& of children worldwide are now enrolled in primary school (which does not mean parents can’t home school their kids)
The gun manufacturer Glock will stop making pistols that can easily be converted to automatic weapons
Since 2017 21 European countries have adopted a “consent-based” definition of rape. It’s about time.
This, from Live Science [livescience@smartbrief.cm]
Some very good news that is likely to surprise to. From Peers news service.
September 14th 2025
Here's an amazing, yet little-known fact that should be front-page news everywhere: Violent crime in America has plummeted to levels not seen since the 1960s. We're talking about a major improvement in public safety that's happened right under our noses—yet somehow, it's been buried or greatly downplayed by the major media.
These Numbers Should Amaze You:
Violent crime rates in 2023? Less than 1/3 of what they were in 1993
Personal theft/larceny crimes? Down to 1/8 of 1993 levels
Your odds of being sexually assaulted? Down 60% from what they were 30 years ago
Here’s more very good news from The Progress Network (theprogressnetwork.org)
July 3, 2025
There are 20 million fewer children in child labor than there were in 2020.
By “child labor” we mean kids as young as 5 doing hard labor, not your teenage neighbor working part time at MacDonald’s. That’s amazing news.
And, looking at the figure for the total since 2000, it’s 108 million kids in child labor.
PLEASE take a few minutes to peruse the Summer issue of KINDRED WORLD. This online media community includes splendid compilation of some of the best reading about kids and parenting as well as what it means to create a peaceful world. A very hopeful as well as practical read! 6,000 people are members of KINDRED. And it’s my hope that that number swells to 600,000 by 2035, because the world KINDRED envisions is one that would nurture and nourish all of life.
To quote Martin Luther King Jr.:”The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” (which, by the way, King took from a mid-1800s Unitarian minister’s words). Once in a while we get to see justice being served. Here’s an example: On September 15th, 2025, an ex-British paratrooper began his trial for murder in Northern Ireland. It is the first prosecution tied to the 1972 Bloody Sunday Massacre, where British troops opened fire on unarmed civil rights demonstrators, killing 13 and wounding 15, may of them as they were fleeing!
I am including this bit of good news related to horrifying news as a reminder of just how long it can take before justice is served. The trial comes after decades of legal setbacks.
1440 reported this. Thank you, folks at 1440. [join1440.com]
By the way, the name 1440 refers to the year the printing press was created.
Good news!
Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees unseen for 80 years…(and what that means)
in Live Science [smartbrief.com]
by Chris Simms
Gray wolves had disappeared from Yellowstone National Park by 1930 following extensive habitat loss, human hunting and government eradication programs. Without these top predators, populations of elk grew unfettered. At their peak population, an estimated 18,000 elk ranged across the park, chomping on grasses and shrubs as well as the leaves, twigs and bark of trees like quaking aspen . This stopped saplings from establishing themselves, and surveys in the 1990s found no aspen saplings. Gray wolves were reintroduced in the Park in 1995, to control the number of elk.
"We're seeing significant new growth of young aspen and this is the first time that we've found it in our plots," said the ecologist Luke Painter. “These are young aspen with a trunk greater than 2 inches in diameter at chest height — which haven't been seen there since the 1940s.
"It doesn't mean that they're not going to get killed (such as by bison) or die from something, but the bigger, the more resilient."
Such trees are old enough to spread themselves, either by sending up new shoots from their roots a fair distance from the main tree, or via seed production, he said.
The re-emergence of aspen has widespread effects, he told Live Science. "Aspen are a key species for biodiversity. The canopy is more open than it is with conifers and you get filtering light that creates a habitat that supports a lot of diversity of plants."
This means a boost to berry-producing shrubs, insects and birds and also species like beavers, because the trees are a preferred food and building material for the semi- aquatic rodents, along with the willows and cottonwoods that grow near to water in the region.
From The New Yorker
May 26, 2025
The Radical Development of an entirely new Painkiller (which is a non-opioid!)
This article details the painstaking (no pun intended) efforts to find/create non-opioid substitutes the work for pain. It’s a fascinating read!
I picked this up from Live Science: A Weekly News Digest. [Smartbrief.com]
July 19, 2025
Psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in what are known as “magic mushrooms” have a range of therapeutic potentials, including for treating anxiety, depression and Alzheimers. Now it’s been found to perhaps delay the aging of cells! By looking at isolated human cells in a lab, scientists found it could extend the lifespan of aging mice and improve their fur quality by 57%, depending on the dosage given. That’s phenomenal. The leading researcher in the study at Baylor College of Medicine declared, “I was floored by the data!”
Do take a good look at Local Futures, and their “Feminine Futures” Series
Bill Moyers died in May 2025, at age 91! Thank you, Bill, for all your fine work on U.S. public television, as an investigative journalist and television host of many memorable show.
Also at age 91, English primatologist and chimp researcher, Jane Goodall, died, in the midst of one of her indefatigable speaking tours. Bless you, Jane, for your groundbreaking work on primates that opened our eyes and hearts to these creatures!
And from Peers Inspiration List [peerservice.org]
June 25, 2025
Texas startup sells plastic-eating fungi diapers to tackle landfill waste
June 16, 2025, MSN News
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-startup-sells-plastic-eating...
Could baby poop and fungi work together to tackle landfill waste? That's the idea behind a new product launched by an Austin, Texas-based startup that sells disposable diapers paired with fungi intended to break down the plastic. Each of Hiro Technologies' MycoDigestible Diapers comes with a packet of fungi to be added to the dirty diaper before it is thrown in the trash. After a week or two, the fungi are activated by moisture from feces, urine and the environment to begin the process of biodegradation. An estimated 4 million tons of diapers were disposed of in the United States in 2018, with no significant recycling or composting. Diapers take hundreds of years to naturally break down. That means the very first disposable diaper ever used is still in a landfill somewhere. To tackle this, Hiro Technologies turned to fungi. These organisms - which include mushrooms, molds, yeasts and mildew - derive nutrients from decomposing organic matter. In 2011, Yale University researchers discovered a type of fungus in Ecuador that can feed on polyurethane, a common polymer in plastic products. They figured the fungus, Pestalotiopsis microspora, would be capable of surviving on plastic in environments lacking oxygen, like landfills. Hiro Technologies co-founder Tero Isokauppila, a Finnish entrepreneur who also founded medicinal mushroom company Four Sigmatic, said there are more than 100 species of fungi now known to break down plastics.
From The New Yorker
Saturday, July 12, 2025
by Bill McKibben
4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment
In the past two years… with surprisingly little notice, renewable energy has suddenly become the obvious, mainstream, cost-efficient choice around the world. Against all the big bad things happening on the planet (and despite all the best efforts of the Republican-led Congress in recent weeks), this is a very big and hopeful thing.
people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours. Solar power is now growing faster than any power source in history, and it is closely followed by wind power—which is really another form of energy from the sun, since it is differential heating of the earth that produces the wind that turns the turbines.
Last year, 96% of the global demand for new electricity was met by renewables, and in the United States 93%ß of new generating capacity came from solar, wind, and an ever-increasing variety of batteries to store that power.
In March, for the first time, fossil fuels generated less than half the electricity in the U.S. In California, at one point on May 25th, renewables were producing a record hundred and 58% of the state’s power demand. Over the course of the entire day, they produced eighty-two per cent of the power in California, which, this spring, surpassed Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy.
__________
This, from a landmark new book written by a U.S. General:
(What makes it Good News is that it’s a high-ranking U.S. military man who is blowing the whistle on the war industry.)
WAR IS A RACKET – by General Smedley Butler
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. In the World War [World War I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted huge gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. [Please note these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 20 or more]
WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
The World War cost the United States some $52 billion. That means $400 [over $6,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. The normal yearly profits of a business concern in the U.S. are 6 to 12%. But war-time profits, that is another matter – 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% – the sky is the limit. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it. Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump, leap, and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people. The average pre-war earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. $58 million a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950%.
Take one of our steel companies. Their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49 million a year! Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105 million a year. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240 million. Not bad.
They sold your Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France! There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. When the war was over some 4 million sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them.
If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. Their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body. It has been estimated that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion [nearly $1 trillion with inflation]. Of this sum, $39 billion was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 billion in profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
Who provides these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, I visited 18 government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation 18 years ago. Mortality among veterans is three times as great as those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the offices, factories, and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded. They were made to "about face," to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put through mass psychology and entirely changed. We trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face!" This time they had to do their own readjustment. We didn't need them any more. Many of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that their ships might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!
Well, it's a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. Steps must be taken to smash the war racket. We must take the profit out of war. And we must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? Money.
An allied commission came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group: "There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the US we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money. So..."
Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, America never would have entered the war. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off, they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars." Very little has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars. Disarmament conferences don't mean a thing. At all these conferences, lurking in the background are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not seriously limit armaments. So ... I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!
That’s it for today, folks. Thanks for taking the time to read my newsletter.
With love and well wishes for the holiday season to each of you.
Suzanne
You just read issue #61 of Suzanne Arms: My Take. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.